Ash: A Secret History (139 page)

The disguised woman stood abruptly, shoved the wooden candlestick into Digorie Paston’s hand, and strode towards the dark stairwell. Her footsteps clattered down the stone steps.

“I’ll get you an escort.” Robert Anselm stood and bellowed. Ash heard the sound of men in mail running.

“But, madam, you should rest,” Digorie Paston protested. The English priest took her hands and turned them over, studying her palms in a businesslike way. “God’s grace has failed to rescue you. It were better you should fast and pray, humble yourself, and pray to him again.”

“Later. I’ll come to Compline.
⁹
The Duke has to know about this!” Ash probed for voices, as a tongue probes an aching tooth. “Godfrey—”

A weak warmth. Godfrey’s voice faint, all but inaudible:

–
Blessed be!

A sound like wind through trees filled her soul. Creaking and whispering at first, and then loud, until her eyes watered, and she rubbed with the heel of her hands at her temples. “Okay—”

As she withdrew the impulse of her mind, the deafening interior sound sank to a keening mutter.

The Wild Machines, choral, lamenting, their language old, now, and incomprehensible. The language in which they spoke to Gundobad, so many centuries ago: an ancient, impenetrable Gothic tongue.

Richard Faversham said, “Don’t tell God ‘later’, madam. He wouldn’t like it.”

Ash stared at him for a second; and chuckled. “Then don’t tell Him I said it, master priest. Come with me to the Duke. I may need you to explain that your prayers failed. That I can’t be cut free of the Stone Golem.”

And I’ll ask him again. Why is Burgundy so important? Why is Burgundy an
obstacle
to the Wild Machines? And this time I’m going to
have
to have an answer out of him.

With the reappearance of Rickard and her younger pages, she was fully dressed in minutes; borrowed sword belted on under a thick campaigning cloak, and the edge of her hood pulled down over her helmet.

Anselm and the escort surrounded her through Dijon’s pitch-black streets, under the stars. The deep boom of cannon shattered the silence, and from somewhere far off, towards the northern wall, came the crackle of fire. Men and women slid through the shadows, civilians running from the bombardment, or thieving; Ash did not stop to investigate. A company of Burgundian men-at-arms passed them in one square, a hundred men, feet slapping the frozen earth, running in order for the wall. Her hand went to her sword-hilt, but she kept on going.

The palace was a dazzle of light; candles brilliant through the glass of ogee windows, torches flaring among the guards at the gates. In the light, Ash caught sight of a flaxen head of hair.

Floria, her hood pushed back and her face red, stood gesticulating at a large Burgundian sergeant. As Ash arrived at her side, she broke off.

“They won’t let me in. I’m a bloody
doctor,
and they won’t let me in!”

Ash pushed to the front, standing between men-at-arms in Lion livery. Smuts from torches stung her eyes. Bitter wind snapped at her mittened hands; her exposed face. Her stomach thumped, cold.

“Ash, mercenary, Duke’s man,” she explained rapidly to the sergeant in charge of the cordon of guards. “I must speak with his Grace. Send word to him that I’m here.”

“I ’aven’t got time for this—” The Burgundian sergeant’s harassed expression faded as he turned. He gave her a nod. “Demoiselle
Ash!
You came in last night; I was on the gate. They say you razed Carthage. That right?”

“I wish it was,” she said, putting all the frankness she could into her tone. Seeing that she had his momentary respect and attention, she said quietly, “Pass me through. I have important information for Duke Charles.
Whatever
crisis you’ve got here, this is more important.”

She had time to think
But I don’t need to fool him, this
is
more important,
and to see that it was her conviction of that, rather than her faked sincerity, that convinced the man.

“I’m sorry, Captain. We’ve just cleared all the physicians out. I can’t let you in. There’s only priests in there now.” The Burgundian sergeant jerked his head, and as she stepped aside with him from the front of the crowd, lowered his voice:

“No point, ma’am. There’s a dozen abbots and bishops up in his Grace’s chamber, all wearing their knees out on the stone, and it isn’t going to do one damn bit of good. God lays His heaviest burden on His most faithful servant.”

“What’s happened?”

“You’ve seen wounded men when they’re in the balance, and it suddenly goes one way or the other.” The sergeant reached up, tilting his sallet, his bloodshot eyes weary in his lined face. “Keep it quiet, ma’am, please. There’ll be upset soon enough. Whatever your business, you’ll have to keep it for whoever succeeds him. His Grace the Duke is on his death-bed now.”

Floria came back into the upper floor of the tower. “It’s true.”

She walked across the chamber to the hearth, ignoring Anselm and Angelotti; spoke directly to Ash, and sank down in a huddle by the fire, holding her hands out to the flames.

“I managed to get as far as his chamber door. One of his physicians is still there: a German. Charles of Burgundy is dying. It started two hours ago, with fever, sweats. He became unconscious. It seems he hasn’t passed water or faecal matter for days. His body has begun to stink. He isn’t conscious for the prayers.”
¹⁰

Ash stood,
gazing
down at the company surgeon. “How long, Florian?”

“Before he dies? He’s not a lucky man.” Floria’s eyes reflected flames. She continued to stare into the hearth. “Tonight, tomorrow; the day after, at the latest. The pain will be bad.”

Robert Anselm said, “Girl, if he were one of your men, you’d be up there with a misericord right now.”
¹¹

An air of unease had spread up and down through the tower’s floors, from the cooks and pages in the kitchens, to the troops, to the guard on Ash’s door. Knowing that the surgeon would be overheard, Ash made no attempt to stop her speaking.
If there’s going to be a morale problem, I want it out in the open where I can see it.

“Well, we’re fucked,” Robert Anselm remarked. “No second try at Carthage. And watch this fucking siege collapse!”

His tread was heavy as he clattered, still fully armoured, across the floor. Outside the slit-windows, the sound of a night bombardment echoed; golem-machines, which require neither sleep nor rest, throwing missiles, battering ceaselessly at Dijon’s walls. She saw him flinch at the nearer strikes. “What does happen ‘when the Duke dies’? What will these Wild Machines be able to do?”

“We are about to find out.” Antonio Angelotti came forward into the fire’s light from the door. “Madonna, Father Paston sends word he is about to begin the service of Compline.”

Ash gestured irritably. “I’ll do Matins.
¹²
Angeli, we don’t just
sit
here. If that’s ‘Gundobad’s child’ out there… If the Wild Machines say the Faris can do a miracle, like Gundobad did when he made Africa into a desert – are you going to sit there and wait to find out if they’re right?”

The gunner came to squat beside Floria del Guiz, two golden heads together. Angelotti had the air of a man who knows that, as soon as the bombardment stops, he will have to be ready to deal with the follow-up assault. From time to time he experimentally flexed his bandaged, gut-sewn arm. “What is there to do but wait, madonna? Sally out and see if you can kill her in battle?”

There was a small silence. Angelotti cocked his head. She saw him recognise that the Visigoth guns had ceased firing.

“He promised another raid on Carthage. I was counting on it.” Ash calculated as she spoke. “With him dead – no chance. So: we don’t get to take out the Stone Golem. There’s only one answer left. Angeli’s right. We take out the Faris. And then it doesn’t
matter
what the Wild Machines planned, or what they bred her for, or any of that. Dead is dead. You don’t do miracles of any kind when you’re dead.”

Robert Anselm shook his head, grinning. “You’re mad. She’s in the middle of a fucking army, out there!” He paused. “So – what’s our plan?”

Ash shook his shoulder as she passed him, walking to study the papers on the trestle table; maps and calculations drawn spider-thin in the candlelight. “‘Plan’? Who said anything about a plan? Damn good idea if we
had
a plan…”

Between Anselm’s deep laugh, and Angelotti’s more subdued amusement, Ash heard a commotion on the stairs. Deep voices boomed. She was instantly and instinctively shoulder to shoulder with Anselm and Angelotti, a glance checking that Floria was safely behind them; all three facing the stair entrance, hands gripping sword-hilts.

Rickard stumbled as he came in, falling to his knees on the floorboards. He dropped what he was carrying in both arms.

The blanket-wrapped bundle dropped with a muffled, sharp clatter.

“What the fuck?” Ash began.

Still kneeling, the black-haired boy flipped the blanket open.

The shifting candles reflected from a mass of curved, banded, and shining metal. Ash glimpsed confusion on Floria’s face as the surgeon stared, while the two men had already begun to laugh, Robert Anselm swearing in an amazed, cheerful stream of filth.

Ash walked across the floor to the blanket. She leaned down and picked her cuirass up by its shoulder straps. The hollow cuirass sat in the concertina’d skirts; and the fauld clicked down as she lifted the empty armour up, the tasset plates swinging on their leathers.

“She’s sent my fucking armour back!”

Two complete metal legs lay in the blanket, together with a tangle of shoulder defences: pauldrons, spaulders, and a gorget. One arm defence was unpointed, the butterfly-shape of the couter taking the light and splintering it. Ash put her cuirass down and picked up a gauntlet, flexing it, letting the laminations slide over each other. A few spots of rust, and some scratches, were new.

Incredulous, Ash said, “Shit! She
must
have been impressed by us holding the wall! If I’m worth bribing— Does she still think we’ll betray Dijon? Open a gate?”

Half of her furiously thinking,
What does this mean?,
the other half can only stroke metal, examine linings for tears, remember each field that earned her the money to say to an armourer
Make me this.

“Why
now?
If she’s thought better of direct assault—”

What has she – heard?

Turning her head, Ash confronted Rickard’s immense, utter pride. “Uh – right. Better get it cleaned up, hadn’t you? Finish the job.”

“Yes, boss!”

Under the curved plates, with its long belt wrapped up neatly around the hilt, a wheel-pommel, single-handed sword lay in its scabbard; her own sweat-marks still dark on the leather grip.

“Son of a bitch.” Ash’s fingers continued to slide over the gauntlet. She squatted, touching cold metal: sword, breastplate, backplate, visored sallet; checking leathers and buckles; as if only touch and not sight could confirm its reality. “She sent my sword and harness back…”

And Carthage didn’t tell her to do this
–
if what Godfrey says is true, she’s not talking via the Stone Golem!

Rickard sat back on his heels and wiped his running nose.

“Sent a message, too.” He waited, a little self-importantly, until Ash’s attention focused solely on him.

“A message from the Faris?”

“Yeah. Her herald told it to me. Boss, she says she wants to see you. She says she’ll give you a truce, if you come out to the northside camp at dawn.”

“A
truce!
” Robert Anselm guffawed coarsely.

“Tomorrow morning, boss.” Rickard himself looked sceptical. “She says.”

“Does she, by God?” Ash straightened up, one gauntlet still in her hand. She stared thoughtfully at the knuckle-plates. “Florian, the Duke – you said it could be as early as tonight?”

The surgeon, behind her, said, “It could be any time. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the mourning bells right now, if it comes to it.”

“So we don’t have any argument.” Ash turned to her command group. “And we don’t get the idea that this is a democracy. Rickard, send a page to find the herald again. Roberto, get me an escort for dawn – I want people who aren’t trigger-happy. You’re in command until I get back into the city.”

Robert Anselm said, “Yes.”

Floria del Guiz opened her mouth, shut it, stared at Ash’s expression for a moment, and snapped, “
If you
get back.”

“I’ll come with you, madonna.” Antonio Angelotti stood up lithely. “Ludmilla’s burned but she can walk, now: she’ll command the guns. You may need me. I know their scientist-magi. I may see things that you won’t.”

“True.” Ash rubbed the heel of her hand against her gauntlet. “Rickard, let’s armour me up, shall we? Just for practice, before morning…”

Robert Anselm said, “You’ll get stopped at the city wall. Mercenary captain, off to see the enemy as soon as she hears the Duke’s dying? They won’t like it.”

“Then I’ll get a written pass from Olivier de la Marche. I’m the hero of Carthage! He knows Duke Charles trusts me. More to the point, he knows I wouldn’t be leaving my movable valuables – that is, you lot! – unless I was coming back. You can work out a sally-and-rescue with him, if the Visigoths turn treacherous.”

“‘If’?” Floria spat. “Have some sense in that pointy head of yours, woman! If you’re on the other side of these walls, she’ll kill you!”

“That must be why I’m shitting myself,” Ash said dryly, and saw the creases at the corners of Floria’s eyes as she unwillingly smiled.

As Ash began to strip off, and Rickard dug her arming doublet and hose out of one of the oak chests, she said quietly, “Robert, Florian, Angeli. Remember – it’s different now Charles is dying.
Don’t lose sight of the objective.
We’re not here now to defend Dijon. We’re not here to fight Visigoths. We’re here to survive – and, since we can’t get away from here, right now that means we’re here to stop the Faris.”